Intermodal shipping containers are containers of standardized sizes used to ship cargo both regionally and internationally via road, rail, and water, and are widely employed with about twenty million such containers in use. Since they are typically made of rigid steel, they displace the same volume whether full or empty. Empty intermodal shipping containers make up a significant portion of containers being shipped at any one time. Whether being stored or transported, empty intermodal shipping containers pose handling and storage challenges due to their size and the space required to accommodate their full volumes.
Efforts to design collapsible intermodal shipping containers have led to containers that require more than one person to reconfigure between an erect and a collapsed configuration, and also require several minutes to effectuate the transition. Additional time and effort to handle such collapsible intermodal shipping containers make them ill suited for use in busy transport hubs and other streams of commerce.
Consequently, there is a need for a collapsible container that can better address these and other challenges.